Spain afflicted by 25% unemployment, rising to 50% at youth level; 367,000 lose jobs in Q1 2012, #austerity accelerates tinyurl.com/cdx34as—
Asad Yawar (@Mediolana) May 02, 2012
Monthly Archives: April 2012
The Slain in Spain: Employment Carnage as Spanish Economy Enters ‘Death Spiral’
Theodore Dalrymple’s British ‘Brutishness’: The Failure of a Monoculture
Reading about the United Kingdom in the overseas press – Mediolana is headquartered in the frankly stunning London neighbourhood of Kensington – is something that our CSO takes particular enjoyment in, and a recent piece in the exquisitely-titled Wall Street Journal was no exception. Authored by one Theodore Dalrymple – the nom de plume of the retired psychiatrist A. M. Daniels – The Ugly Brutishness of Modern Britain is an eloquent lament for civility in an increasingly coarse land.
Dalrymple describes a United Kingdom where fast food packaging defaces hedgerows and where basic hygiene is, allegedly, all but absent. The writer appears particularly perturbed by a nihilistic, alcohol-defined youth culture, the depressingly emetic results of which can be seen across much of Great Britain on weekend nights. And then, with a flourish of his keyboard, the writer places the blame at the door of multiculturalism: because, so the logic goes, multiculturalism places all cultures at an equal value, this means that even the least edifying forms of underclass culture are rendered immune from criticism.
However, on closer examination the situation that Dalrymple is describing is arguably something entirely different: the failure of a monoculture. The booze-criminality-police triangle that features prominently in his article may be a staple of life in deepest, almost uniformly English Shropshire, but in the phenomenally international metropolis that is London, alcohol consumption patterns of the kind that Dalrymple are barely discernible: recent figures from the National Health Service (‘NHS’) illustrate that there is a chasm in this respect between the rest of the UK and its capital city, where on weekend nights one can walk through entire commercial zones – even in relatively deprived areas – with little or no fear of alcohol-fuelled violence.
Dalrymple’s piece evinces a common fallacy: that multiculturalism is equivalent to a simplistic moral relativism. Instead, if one understands multiculturalism as its etymology would appear to dictate – as an acceptance of the long-established reality of cultural pluralism – then far from encouraging moral relativism, multiculturalism could in fact counter it. Most of the different cultures that have significant presences in London, from the Italian and Arabic to the French, Indian and Turkish, are arguably considerably more likely than contemporary English culture to place at least a nominal value on institutions such as the family and religion, as well as the obligations of the individual to the group; particularly in this context, multiculturalism is one of United Kingdom’s greatest assets, rather than something to be regretted.
Filed under Culture, Media, Urban Life
Samsung Electronics Ascends to Full-Spectrum Dominance!
South Korean giant now world's biggest mobile, TV and flat screen maker, enjoys highest quarterly profits since 2008 tinyurl.com/7fdrfst—
Asad Yawar (@Mediolana) April 29, 2012
Filed under Uncategorized
Contract Killings: Nearly One Billion Dollars of Deals at 2012 Beijing International Film Festival
A record 元5.2bn/US$837m worth of contracts signed at the #2012 #Beijing Film Festival, an 88.7% y-o-y increase tinyurl.com/bvayqda—
Asad Yawar (@Mediolana) April 29, 2012
Filed under Business, Culture, Economic Development, Finance
With Love Comes Strange Currencies: China and Turkey Cement Strategic Partnership With Fiscal Diversification
#Turkey and #China dump #dollar for purposes of bilateral trade; US$100bn trade volume equivalent #2020 target tinyurl.com/cxjj33e #RMB #TL—
Asad Yawar (@Mediolana) April 26, 2012
Formula 1 in Bahrain: When Information Flows Disobediently
The first part of an (unofficially) extended weekend saw Mediolana’s CSO in a place that is about as close as anything comes to his natural habitat: chilling out at an über-modern pizzeria, replete with metallic furnishings and plasma television screen, in London’s infinitely trendy Charlotte Street. But between the alternate slices of succulent, stone-baked primavera and fungi, the pictures being proffered on that crystalline screen were enough to make anyone pause over their pizza: an alfresco press conference featuring none other than Formula 1 impresario Bernie Ecclestone and Prince Salman bin Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, the Crown Prince of Bahrain.
With the sound muted, the pizzeria’s patrons were forced to concentrate on the expressions of this unlikely pair, snapshots which were complemented by a ticker which dutifully transmogrified their defensive outpourings into palatable soundbites. Nonetheless, the lasting impression was that of two men uncomfortably exerting themselves in defending the indefensible: amidst the background of arguably the fiercest crackdown within a Gulf Cooperation Council (‘GCC’) state since the beginning of the Arab Spring, a Grand Prix was being staged with the express purpose of presenting a united – or, to use the official term, ‘UniF1ed‘ – nation.
It backfired spectacularly, with the presence of the Formula 1 circus in a country which in recent times has become most notable for flattening roundabouts only serving to remind the international community that tensions between the Al Khalifa-dominated government of Bahrain and large sections of their subject population (particularly, though not exclusively, the kingdom’s majority Shia community) are very much a live issue.
Why did this expensive PR manoeuvre – the construction cost alone of the German-designed Bahrain International Circuit, a 2004 establishment, was US$150m – fail so badly? Quite simply, it seems that the Bahraini elite – despite all the technological developments of the last thirty-five years, particularly the last fifteen – still believe in a mono-channel, top-down flow of information. They do not appear to have realised that information now flows horizontally from networked device to networked device; that while one global news channel may have an interest in underplaying developments, others may seek to be more objective or even exaggerate the grimness of the situation on the ground; and that events cannot necessarily be hermetically isolated from each other.
In such a context, there is no room for pretence: to escape censure, both governments and individuals have to be seen to be acting within the rule of law, proportionately, and flexibly. Torture and indiscriminate killing in an era when every mobile telephone subscriber is a potential mini news agency is a risky strategy which so-called ‘weapons of mass distraction’ may only serve to draw attention to rather than obfuscate.
Filed under Media, Politics, Technology
From Android to Asteroid: Google Doyens Seek Universal Domination
#Google behemoths key players in Planetary Resources Inc., a space exploration + natural resources venture #domination tinyurl.com/6vfjjma—
Asad Yawar (@Mediolana) April 22, 2012
Oh là là! France’s 22% Youth Unemployment Rate Unlikely to Improve Under New Administration
#Hollande proposes to create just 60,000 new jobs in #education, 150,000 jobs for youth in deprived areas tinyurl.com/c8eot9q #France—
Asad Yawar (@Mediolana) April 21, 2012
Filed under Education
